We’ve finally arrived in New Smyrna Beach!!! And thrilled to be here!!!! We got here shortly after lunch on Tuesday. We had a chilly trip down from Fernandina, ran aground at Matanzas Inlet and weren’t sure we would be able to get ourselves off, but we do have a lot of horses down in the engine room thankfully, almost took out a channel marker between Daytona and NSB, but made it safely nonetheless.
We made a visit to our favorite local pub “Maloney’s” Tuesday evening – they have entertainment on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, so we will be there again tonight. We can walk there, as well as many other places nearby. We made it to the beach today as well. It looked like a lot of people from waaayyy north are down here – they were swimming in water that was 57* - (I think spring breakers are starting to show up and what a hearty bunch they are!). That’s pretty darned chilly. We’re so tired of being cold – all we want to do is sit in the sun and soak up the warmth.
New Smyrna is quite a small town and has somehow been able to retain that small town charm. Everyone is so friendly and most businesses even have water bowls out for the customer’s dogs as well. We went into a NAPA store this morning looking for a belt for the alternator, and had Savannah with us, and the shop owner pegged us for ‘boat people’ because we were walking and had her with us. She had to stop and get a drink before we left and snatch up the peanuts he had out for the squirrels that frequent the store as well!
Savannah likes to go out to the dock closest to the ICW entrance into the marina in the late afternoon and watch the dolphins come in to feed. Yesterday afternoon we saw about six or so jumping and frolicking close to us. She knows when we say ‘dolphin’ that she needs to look at the water. She is also keeping tabs on the pelicans and herons that are using the docks for perches. One of these times she is going to go right off the dock and into water when she chases them.
Since we last posted to the blog we are very sad to tell you that Shelby is no longer with us. She is and will be sadly missed by us as well as Savannah. We will be sprinkling her ashes in her favorite places during our travels.
Don’t look for too many posting from NSB, as there is only so much we can say about the place, no matter how much we like it. Pretty much all we will be doing is continuing work projects on the boat, walking the beach and taking Savannah for long walks.
Below are some pictures of our trip down here. One of them is a bald eagle, of which we actually saw three. That was pretty amazing.
To the left is the suspended bridge over the St. Johns River at the Jacksonville Port. To the right is the St. Augustine lighthouse. Below left is sunset over St. Augustine. 
